Objects of Memory
by HeartandImagination
Summary: This is something that a father should never have to do… All he has left now of his dear child are pictures and a few personal effects. Someone will pay for taking her from them.


**Objects of Memory**

**Spoilers up through 5 x 05, "An Origin Story."**

This is something that a father should never have to do… Sadly, he is not the only Bishop man who has experienced it. At least his counterpart from this universe had a memorial; a gravestone; a physical place for Walter to visit and reflect. All he has left now of his dear child are pictures and a few personal effects. He picks up Etta's identification badge for Fringe Division with a shaky reverence, a sense of great pride swelling the shattered pieces of his heart.

Without either him or Olivia, she had risen above the rest and did what she could from the inside to help her friends and the people of this fucked up world. Of course, it didn't hurt to have Phillip Broyles on her side, but Broyles had to know that the progeny of Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop had to be something else—someone special. And probably a bit stubborn, and a little pain-in-the-ass, to boot.

His baby girl had turned out to be one fine woman.

_Yet she's gone, and the world goes on like she didn't matter at all…_

When he and Olivia had first lost Etta, there was at first an unwritten rule that neither one of them dared to enter her bedroom; that they'd find her shortly. The day that she disappeared was just a big, disorganized mess. Someone had their daughter, and it wouldn't be long before they'd be trying to pawn bath duty off on one another again.

Days dragged into weeks…

One night he had come down out of his own little "fortress of solitude"—a study in the attic—to find that the painted purple door adorned with butterflies was ajar. The sight that he saw in the dim light of the moon took his breathe away, and brought wet dew to the corners of his exhausted and weary eyes.

_How am I still capable of tears?_

Olivia was curled up in the small toddler bed, as tight as she could make herself. In her arms, she held Etta's favorite stuffed bunny toy. Which reminded him that the real bunny—a white spotted Gene-like lab specimen named Daisy—needed to have her cage cleaned, the poor thing. The least he could do is to make sure that their daughter's pet did not needlessly suffer. He wanted to wake Olivia and ask her why she was there. Of course, he didn't because he was a coward and already knew the answer. She had lost hope. Their daughter was not coming back.

When Olivia left to meet Walter in New York, leaving him alone, Peter took the rabbit and let it go in the park where Etta disappeared. There was no way that he wanted responsibility for another living thing. The mother of his child left him due his madness, a type of paralysis in one respect, but a machine set into motion in another. All he could do was endlessly travel in order to follow up on any lead that might bring his baby back to his arms. Peter just could not let go and move on.

Peter carefully places the badge in a box, and proceeds to pick up a larger piece of paper with Etta's picture, located next to a familiar Boston snow globe. He's mesmerized by how beautiful she was. He looks over to Olivia, who had reached the limits of her physical endurance, and was curled up much like she was over twenty years ago in their child's empty room. He can see so much of her mother in Etta, and he sighs as he thinks about how he used to refer to them both as "his girls."

Peter surveys the surroundings of Etta's room in attempt to gain more information about who their daughter was. There is a small bookshelf on one side of the room. As he surveys the volumes, he smiles. She apparently had found some of the books from their old home. He finds _Harry Potter_ and _His Dark Materials _among the volumes of science books and forensic manuals. As much as she tried to be tough, Etta did have a streak of nostalgia; a tie to happier times and an escape from the madness that she dealt with day in and day out. Peter opens a sketchbook and smiles at the pictures of a happy family, of rainbows, of the bunny and Gene, and of the fields of flowers that his precious toddler loved to draw. These he will keep.

He peers closer at one of the volumes and can't believe what he sees.

_The Book_

A book that had first caused great pain between him and Olivia, but then it ended up becoming a catalyst that aided in them becoming emotionally open with each other…

"_If You See the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him." Explains the Buddha statue next to her bed…_

It teaches that freedom is a responsibility. That we are all already dying. That ultimately, we are all alone, although love does help. Most of all, it asserts that the world is not just. We bring the world meaning.

The book and her drawings end up in the box.

Another item of interest is a soft bristled hairbrush, and he recognizes it immediately. This, too, is a remnant from their old house. He remembers spending a lot of time brushing her thick, golden hair. At times, he was thankful that he was man, and that men were not likely to sport long, beautiful hair. Though Walter had told him that he had went through a long-haired hippy stage in the 60's… Tangles were a bitch and little girls seemed to grow them like new skin cells.

Eyes narrowing, Peter notices something is not quite right about the jewelry box. It's been tampered with, and he discovers a hidden button. Behind the Macy Thanksgiving Day Parade print on the wall, he finds Etta's personal hidden arsenal of weapons and C4. Etta was always good at stashing things aside he muses, thinking back fondly to her hidden caches of cereal and other treats. Peter liked to call her his little squirrel, but Olivia was never amused with their daughter's _need _to _steal_ food and _hide_ it; some habits die hard. Taking all that he can from the stash, he starts to pack a bag. Olivia awakens.

Her sleep is a respite from reality. She shares her thoughts with him, and for some reason her words about waking up, hoping that the events of the past few months were all a bad dream, felt very déjà vu to him…

_Do you know what it's like... to wake up and just for a moment... think that everything is as it was? And then to realize it's not... that the nightmare you had was real._

"Why?" She asks. Good question for which her husband has no answers. But he knows her pain—knows the depths of her suffering on a very intimate level—so he does all that he can do; he holds her, and lets her cry into his chest, until his shirt is soaked with her hot tears. He breathes in her scent as he runs his hands through her hair and massages her back with his loving touch. They cannot take each other for granted any longer.

The people of this world have no idea what has been done in their name—what Etta has accomplished. There is a long chain of heroes in Peter's life: Mother Elizabeth for her resilience and love in caring for him; Olivia for making him actually believe that he mattered; Simon for sacrificing himself so that hope had a fighting chance; His precious baby girl, who grew up to have the heart of lioness.

_She existed!_ Peter wants to yell out to the streets outside the soon-to-be-abandoned apartment. _Her life meant something, and you are all worse off now that she is gone! _

The Observers will pay for so callously taking away the one thing that made Peter hold on to this mortal coil_. _

_God damn them all to Hell._

If he thought it would matter one iota, he'd get down on his hands and knees and beg whatever deity there is to have mercy on his own damned soul. Because at this point, Peter Bishop is convinced that he is in a living Hell.

The only place to look for answers is himself. God has forsaken him and his family. If one of the bald headed demon spawn ever falls into his line of sight, there will be no stopping him. No one has seen what Peter Bishop is truly capable of, at least in this timeline. But he remembers a time when resorting to violence was the status-quo for him. Killing shapeshifters was just the tip of the iceberg. Peter is quite capable of bloodlust in the quest for what he perceives as justice in his mind. A quit wit backed by extensive study lends to particular effectiveness when dealing with torment. He imagines his daughter's eyes begging the heartless, unfeeling Observer executioner to spare her. He has reached a point where he will show no mercy.

Love brought her into the world.

Love drove her mission.

Love will destroy him if it means revenge for that child's senseless death.


End file.
